I Hereby Vow

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High,

and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” (Psalm 50:14-15 ESV)

Have you ever watched the courtroom shows on TV? Not the reality ones on today, but the older ones where the lawyers discover who really “done it”, and get their wrongly accused client off through their careful sleuthing. The lawyer ends up the hero with everyone applauding, and his client applauding the loudest. I love those shows. Good triumphs over evil and justice prevails. Oh, if that was only true in real life, right?

All the people who are called to the stand must raise their right hand and make a vow to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Then they are asked to not only make that vow to the court, but to God as their ultimate judge. Of course, it turns out some of them don’t. Lying to the courts is perjury. Lying to God is worse.

What do you vow to God each morning? Do you offer Him your day in thanksgiving that you woke up this morning? As a child, like I did, you may have prayed the “lay me down to sleep” prayer. It is a prayer of releasing control, isn’t it. Kids are used to someone else controlling their lives. As adults, it is easy to forget our next breath comes from God, much less our day ahead.

Whatever happens to you today, if you begin it with a thankful vow to God that it will be His, He will be there for you. You may not have a zippy-de-do-dah day, but you will not walk it alone. The Almighty who can see all and knows all will be right by your side, and on your side

And, even if you are wrongly accused, your Judge will be there to eventually sort out the truth and deliver you. Like on the old courtroom shows, it may have to be slowly revealed, but in the end, people will see your God was at work in your life and give Him the glory.

Until then, yours and my job is twofold. One, we are to wake up each day and thank Him again, then give it (and ourselves) to Him to use according to His will, knowing that He knows best. We may feel as if we are in a prison cell—trapped by circumstances in our lives, or shackled by hurts when others have done us wrong. But our role in it all is to stay put and let someone wiser than us handle the situation. Like the lawyers on TV, our LORD will tell us when we are to speak, and when we must just sit back and bite our tongues as the world watches.

Secondly, if we have done something wrong, we must immediately confess it to Him, or He cannot handle our case. True, unlike the lawyers on TV, we cannot hide anything from God. However, part of trusting Him is confessing everything to Him. That also means to trust He will deliver us in the times of need, just like the client trusted his sleuthing lawyer to be his hero.

After all, God is ultimately our Judge and our Jury, and if we thankfully give each day to Him, the sacrifice His Son made on the cross will prove our innocence before Him, and eventually our peers. But first, any wrong doing on our part must be voluntarily revealed and we must plead the court’s mercy. Then, justice can prevail- in the Judge’s most perfect timing.